This invention relates to electronics in general and more particularly to digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion circuits.
The increasing application of digital electronics in a wide variety of real-world applications has broadened the necessity for analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters to provide a variety of interfacing capabilities to the electronics designer.
In microprocessor controlled industrial applications, for example, it is often necessary to convert a sensed analog signal into a digital format for computation and for storage in random access memory. Subsequent to digital operation on the digitally-formatted signal, an analog output to a meter or analog actuator is required and thus a digital-to-analog conversion capability is also necessary.
Normally, the implementation of this type of circuit requires a dedicated analog-to-digital (A/D) converter to receive inputs and re-format the input signal into a digital configuration for the processor. Additionally, a dedicated digital-to-analog circuit (DAC) to convert from the digital format back into an analog value is also required.
A significant design problem encountered in virtually every electronics system design is the requirement to reduce the parts count when possible without degrading performance, and thereby reduce cost, power consumption, and circuit board area required for a specific circuit function.